Alphabet records steep profits

Google's freshly created parent company, Alphabet, has recorded a steep profit gain, the media have reported on Friday. According to multiple media reports, Alphabet has recorded profits of up to 50 per cent for the third quarter of 2015.

Net income was $3.98bn (£2.59bn), the BBC reports, up from $2.74bn (£1.78bn) for the same quarter last year, while Google's revenue was $18.7 (£12.1bn) compared with $16.5bn (£10.72bn).

The results prompted the Google board to authorise $5.1bn (£3.32bn) in share buybacks.

“We regularly adjust the way we present ads, so we expanded ad space in some queries with particularly high commercial intent to display more relevant, mobile-friendly ads,” The Guardian cites Alphabet’s CFO Ruth Porat saying.

Google has turned to new technologies for future growth, investing heavily in driverless cars, artificial intelligence, internet-connected devices and cures for hard-hitting diseases.

These projects are also called “Larry Page’s moonshots”. The company was split, with Google keeping its core business to show investors that with all these “moonshots”, the company is still profitable.

The biggest areas of growth for the company were mobile ads and YouTube.

The latter has recently announced its paid version, called YouTube Red. The paid version, costing $9.99 (£6.49), will allow ads-free surfing, exclusive content as well as music and videos which were usually blocked on Google’s video service.